Lady Gaga Vs. Dietrich: Discuss

November 16, 2012

I’m so tired of Lady Gaga-versus-Madonna comparisons that I was delighted to hear raconteur Justin Sayre compare the Lady to late film legend Marlene Dietrich at last night’s installment of The Meeting, a free-wheeling gay variety show at the Duplex.

Said he:

“Dietrich was the perfect gay icon.

“She lived alone in Paris in the dark. She didn’t want anyone to see her. If that’s not gay, I don’t know what is.

“She was so concerned about her body that she sometimes wore a rubber suit to hold it all together.

“She didn’t really have any singing talent and yet she sang a lot.

“She was a war hero, she turned her back on the Nazis, and she fucked everything that moved.”

And Gaga?

“She’s very encouraging to young people,” he mustered.

“She has some music and she wears dresses made of meat.

“But if anyone can explain what ‘Bad Romance’ means, I’ll give you a silver dollar.”

Furthermore, he aded, “With Gaga, I do see the innovations.

“I saw them the first time–when Grace Jones did them!”

Justin Sayre

Well, even before Grace Jones, there was Liz Renay–how’s that for a segue?–the gun-moll-turned-John-Waters star whom Maggie Moore homaged last night in a well done Cutting Room show called Girl With The Polka Dot Eyes.

Liz was captivatingly sexy, refreshingly honest, and wrote a heck of a memoir called My Face For The World To See.

Moore’s songs and patter told the story of a girl who grew up in poverty, literally looking through the trash to find a sliver of a mirror and some beet juice to apply to her lips to look more like a movie star.

She did become a celebrity, but she eventually ended up involved with gangsters and spending three years in jail.

And then came Desperate Living.

Moore’s presentation last night will surely pave the way for more—not to mention some scholarly dissertations of Gaga vs. Renay.

"More than any other contemporary African-American athlete, his ability to thrive in the pressure cooker of corporate America, while never making any embarrass­ing 'I’m not black, I’m universal' comments or selling his soul rather than just his visage, makes him a role model"

“Though his work for human rights is unassailable, the books grow worse and worse, the tales of his derring-do more and more farfetched. Finally, without at all forgiving him his lies, one feels sorry for Kosinski.”